Celebrating perfect milling quality at Camgrain

Heavy showers brought harvest to a halt in Cambridgeshire today (9 August), although some farmers have managed to get back on this afternoon.

“We’ve had quite a lot of rain, so anything coming in now is nasty, wet stuff,” said Philip Darke, managing director of Camgrain.

So far the store had taken about 50,000t of grain, of which around 15,000t was winter wheat.

“Yields aren’t anything special, at 7-9t/ha, but most farmers are thankful to get a harvest at all,” he said. “And quality is excellent, with almost all the milling wheat reaching the required specification.”

Bushel weights were reaching 80kg/hl, with protein content at 12.8% and upwards. “DON levels are low so we shouldn’t have any mycotoxin issues.”

Spring barley samples were also nice, although the early crops were slightly high in nitrogen for distilling, said Mr Darke.

“They’re averaging about 1.7% – but the later crops will have grown a bit more which should dilute the nitrogen content down a bit.”

Oilseed rape harvest had been one of the latest in 30 years, and Mr Darke reckoned he had seen the best of the crops early on.

“We could see some pretty rum stuff coming in through the rest of August.”